When Americans decide to revive blighted industrial central cities, they often choose to build sports arenas, convention centers, or (à la Detroit) gambling casinos. Some have succeeded, many have failed, but few have been either financially or esthetically heroic.Not so for Bilbao's efforts. As the economic hub of the Basque country in Spain, Bilbao long enjoyed global industrial preeminence in shipbuilding, basing its expertise on more than a millennium's experience of Basques at sea. Like so many of the leading-edge industrial operations of the high machine age in the First World, Basque shipbuilding collapsed after 1970.
What imagination the Basque city officials and Chamber of Commerce had in perceiving art as a basis for commercial success and urban renewal! More significantly, they realized that the idea of art - the suggestion of artiness, as it were - was even more of a commercial draw than art itself. Hence, the building housing the art was more important than the contents. And after taking such a risk in commercial-esthetic theory, the Basque leaders took an even greater risk in selecting an architect. What a stroke of genius to select Frank Gehry, lesser known at the time, as the architect, armed as he was with a magnificent computerized architectural design system without which this amazing structure could not be built.
As bold as the structure is - titanium-clad with huge, uneven-radius curves and surprising asymmetries - it is surprisingly modest in its placement and location. Unlike the new Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum does not sit above the crowd, condescendingly gazing downward. Instead, Gehry's masterpiece is part of its city. For that reason, the sweeping curves remind one of ship hulls, echoing Bilbao's own history, and nearby apartment buildings easily rise above the heights of the museum. Frank Gehry did not design a museum for the city, but of the city.
Getting to Bilbao meant taking a bus from the quaint city of St-Jean de Luz on the French side and travelling through the rugged Basque countryside. This journey gives a sense of the majestic mountains and crashing surf that framed the long history (and prehistory) of the remarkable residents of the region. From this land came a remarkable and proud people who have survived Phoenecian, Roman, Visigothic, French, and Spanish incursions. They have survived by adapting while remaining true to their own traditions, and Gehry's wondrous work reflects a remarkable capacity to be both modern and Basque.
